500 words a day on whatever I want

The Taino genocide

The Taino genocide (1492-1518) is where the Spanish wiped out most of the Tainos (Arawaks), the native people of the northern Caribbean (present-day Cuba, Jamaica, Haiti, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Bahamas, etc). Columbus himself set it in motion and oversaw it till 1500.

According to one estimate, genocide and diseasewiped out 3 million of the 3.5 million Tainos – 85%. Most were already dead when smallpox arrived in 1518.

Columbus noticed two things about the Tainos:

They wore gold jewellery.

Their most advanced weapon was the spear.

Columbus:

With 50 men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want.

Columbus made La Taina, the land of the Tainos, into a living hell. It went way beyond simply killing those who fought Spanish rule. The Spanish had the Tainos:

grilled,

cut up into pieces like sheep,

run down by hunting dogs and torn to pieces,

strung up and burned alive 13 at a time – in memory of Jesus and his 12 Apostles.

They killed even women and children. Even babies: the Spanish threw babies against rocks and into rivers – and laughed. They cut off pieces of Tainos for entertainment. They cut off their heads for practice. They raped women and girls – and brought back syphilis to Europe. They even raped the wife of a king.

The Spanish were kinder to their animals than to the Tainos.

If a Taino killed a Spaniard, the Spanish killed 100 Tainos in return.

They killed Tainos by the thousands, even those who brought them food and gifts. They killed half the people of the kingdom of Maguana outright.

After the killing fields, the Spanish divided the remaining Tainos among themselves to teach them the Christian faith:

For Taino men that meant working in the mines, often being worked to death. As many as 90% died within in three months.

For Taino women that meant working the land, even the heavy work that men used to do.

There was so little food that babies died for lack of milk. Children died of hunger by the thousands. Men were worked so hard in the mines that few children were born.

Columbus demanded a certain amount gold or cotton from each Taino over the age of 13. Those who failed to meet his demands had their hands cut off.

All this was shockingbehaviour by Western standards of the time.

When there were no longer enough Taino workers left, the Spanish brought in African slaves to take their place.

It was such a hell on earth that:

Mothers killed their babies.

Mass suicides were common.

Many fled to the mountains, blacks too, fighting the Spanish from there.

Hatuey, one of the Taino kings of Cuba, told his people to throw their gold into the river: the Christians worshipped gold as their god and would kill them for it.

In 1512 when Hatuey was about to be burned at the stake (pictured), a Franciscan brother told him him about the Christian faith to save his soul. When Hatuey found out that most good Christians were going to Heaven, he chose Hell.

Source: Mainly “A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies” (1542) by Bartolome de Las Casas.

178 Responses

It’s sad that today I hear people say that Native peoples’ civilization and history should not be respected because they were savages. How ironic the disgusting things Europeans did to them and we worship their cultures.

Horrifying, but thank you for the education, Abagond
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The way this story was told in the past was that ALL Tainos (the Arawaks) were exterminated. This was to make the conquest of one and defeat of the other, absolute. Perhaps this was not unlike the way the Tasmanian Genocide was handled — the commonly held belief was that there was nothing left of them, even when there was.

According to one estimate, genocide and disease wiped out 3 million of the 3.5 million Tainos – 85%. Most were already dead when smallpox arrived in 1518.

That’s controversial. From Wikipedia…

Researchers today doubt Las Casas’s figures for the pre-contact levels of the Taíno population, considering them an exaggeration. For example, Anderson Córdova estimates a maximum of 500,000 people inhabiting the island.

Historians have determined that the massive decline was due more to disease than any warfare or direct attacks.[44][45] By 1507 their numbers had shrunk to 60,000. Scholars believe that epidemic disease (smallpox, influenza, measles, and typhus) was the overwhelming cause of the population decline of the indigenous people.

”
As Viceroy and Governor of the Indies, Columbus was a tyrannical dictator and very brutal. When Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand found out they removed Columbus from power and had him brought back to Spain in chains.

[…] "The Taino genocide (1492-1518) is where the Spanish wiped out most of the Tainos (Arawaks), the native people of the northern Caribbean (present-day Cuba, Jamaica, Haiti, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Bahamas, etc). Columbus himself set it in motion and oversaw it till 1500.According to one estimate, genocide and disease wiped out 3 million of the 3.5 million Tainos – 85%. Most were already dead when smallpox arrived in 1518…." […]

“When Hatuey found out that most good Christians were going to Heaven, he chose Hell.”

I can’t blame him, if I saw ppl acting like that i’d want to go in the opposite direction in the afterlife. It’s crazy to me that those so called Christians thought they would go to heaven after all the he11 they caused on earth smdh, but I see its like that still today,

This whole thing is sick, even if they were from different parts of Europe the way they tortured ppl and looked down on poc was still the same everywhere they went. same mo, everywhere kill off the indigenous ppl then bring in African slaves.

“any pre-1492 numbers of Americas population are basically guesswork. I have seen Hispaniola numbers ranging from 200 000 to 8 millions.”

That is true for the Americas as a whole, but remember that in this case Las Casas was there. He said the population density was comparable to Europe, if not higher. That is not unreasonable since Taino society was based on cassava, which could support twice as many people as wheat. And, if memory serves, the Spanish carried out a census at least in the case of Cuba.

Not sure what you are getting at. The numbers might have been lower. Most people might have died of disease. I left both those possibilities open in the post. So what? After the First World War more people died of swine flu than had died in battle. Does that make the war any less terrible?

“Columbus demanded a certain amount gold or cotton from each Taino over the age of 13. Those who failed to meet his demands had their hands cut off.”
Isn’t that the same ung they’re doing now in Sierra Leone with the young kids and the blood diamonds. Thanks Kanye west, I wish there were more artist like him.
They never really change

Abagond, with a stroke of your post you have agreed with the revisionist historians agenda eliminating our people, our culture, our traditions and thousands of years of our history and our continued survival as a people, the Taino people. The Taino are not extinct regardless of what you may think or the resurrect you have come up with. If you or any of your readers and those who have responded to your post would like to see a living people simply type Taino on face book just to name one of the various places that you can find a living and vibrant people fighting against your type of ignorance and discriminating writings on subjects you know nothing about or even bother to do your research before posting this garbage about me and my people.

If I got stuff wrong, then please kindly point it out. But please, before you do that, READ what I wrote. I said that according to one estimate genocide and disease wiped out 85% of the Tainos. That leaves 15% or a half million left. That hardly counts as “extinct”. In the first sentence I said “most”, not “all”. I know it is commonly assumed Tainos are extinct but PLEASE do not assume that I assume that unless it comes out of my own mouth.

Tomas seemed somewhat hasty to condemn your post, so here are some figures about the survival of the Taino’s in Puerto Rico.

Taino survival was different island to island, like in Jamaica, they live on through the Maroons and their descendants but in Puerto Rico and Dominican Republic, Taino’s (unmixed) survived in their own villages but they were reclassified racially.

Just like with the African population in Argentina, the Spanish “exterminated” the remaining Tainos on paper by purposely lying on the Census or by re-classifying their “race”.

“ The Complementary Declaration of July 28th, 1513, (from the Spain) established that those natives who were clothed, Christians, and were capable, could live their own lives, of course remaining subject to the same obligations sustained by the other vassals

The Jerome Fathers decreed that native villages should be established.
Since many of the encomenderos (slave owners) did not carry out the orders of the encomienda system, the attacks on the institution continued. Therefore, in 1544, Carlos I of Spain and V of Germany decided to abolish it.

The decree declared the natives to be as free as any Spaniard.

When the decree arrived, Rodrigo de Bastidas was Bishop, and he held a ceremony in the city of Puerto Rico (San Juan) where according to his report, sixty natives, old and young heard the reading of the royal decree. This figure has been currently interpreted to mean that the natives had almost been exterminated at that early date.

Salvador Brau comments that since Governor Manuel de Lando’s census in 1530 reports the existence of one thousand, one hundred and forty-eight (1,148) natives, it must be surmised that a tremendous amount of deaths had taken place to explain this decrease in numbers.

This same Bishop later discovered that the landowners had lied about the number of natives allotted to them when they heard about the decree.

Six years later the lawyer, Governor of Puerto Rico, Dr. Vallejo, found a great number of natives on the rural farms, all mixed up with African slaves and subject (as the salves), for sale and purchase

Our country’s natives seem to have been typed as “Indians” until the beginning of the XIXth century when Governor don Toribio Montes, faced with the difficulty of fixing ethnic origins, banded all the non-whites together under the title of free colored people (pardos)”

and just to give some depth to describe why Hatuey (Taino chief burned at the stake) and his last words were made famous:

“Hatuey, a Taíno chief from Hispaniola, had escaped in canoes with about four-hundred men, women and children, to warn the Cubans about what to expect from the Spaniards. He explained the need to join against their common enemy, the white men who had inflicted so much suffering on his people.

Hatuey showed the Cubans a basket full of gold and jewels. “Here is the God the Spaniards worship,” he said, “for these they fight and kill;

The Taínos of western and central Cuba could not believe the horrendous message brought by Hatuey, and few joined him.

Hatuey’s strategy against the Spaniards was to attack, guerilla fashion, and then disperse to the hills, where the Indians would regroup for the next attack. For about three months Hatuey’s tactics kept the Spaniards on the defensive, afraid to leave their fort at Baracoa.

Through a traitor, Velásquez was able to surround and capture Hatuey. On February 2, 1512, Hatuey was tied to a stake at the Spanish camp, where he was burned alive.

Just before lighting the fire, a priest offered him spiritual comfort, showing him the cross and asking him to accept Jesus and go to heaven. “Are there people like you in heaven?” he asked. “There are many like me in heaven,” answered the priest. Hatuey answered that he wanted nothing to do with a God that would allow such cruelty to be unleashed in his name.”

I listed my main source right in the post, so I do not know where some get the idea that I used revisionist historians or English propaganda. My main source was:

“A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies” (1542) by Bartolome de Las Casas.

Las Casas was a Spanish priest who was there during the time of the genocide and saw it first-hand. He even spoke to Columbus himself. As maybe you can tell, his account is laced with sarcastic irony – so-called Christians giving Christianity a bad name.

What I am “getting at” is the numbers you gave were rejected by modern historians as a gross exaggeration. And your characterization of “genocide” is similarly rejected by modern historians who list disease as “the overwhelming cause of the population decline.”

I left both those possibilities open in the post. So what?

So one of the possibilities isn’t valid. “Genocide” is a very specific thing. There may be evidence of oppression including executions but there’s no evidence of genocide.

Even if most people died of disease, that does not mean there was no genocide. Just like how most people dying of swine flu after the First World War does not mean there was no war.

As it is, disease is a common cause of death in genocides as people are pushed off their land, denied food aid, etc. In this case, where people were overworked and underfed, many would die of “disease”.

Las Casas saw women and children being killed as a common practice – that is genocide: it serves no military objective other than to wipe out a people. Las Casas saw this stuff with his own eyes – the massacres, the grilling and so on.

Also: If you have ever seriously researched anything you will find that the Wikipedia is not that great. I certainly would not trust it over a primary source. That would be madness. It could not even get Zoe Saldana’s ethnicity right. It is one of those “better than nothing” things.

So, again, my motto is to enjoy the ride rather than to actually expect them to get smart when it comes to race.

It is not in their best interest to admit racism, because again, that means there would have to a redistribution of wealth, and whites would actually have to compete, not hide behind smokescreens like “Low IQ”.

Making it about disease or the numbers are two common ways genocides are denied:

Exaggerating numbers and passing off natural diseases as genocide are two ways in which racebaiters ply their trade.

As it is, disease is a common cause of death in genocides as people are pushed off their land, denied food aid, etc.

Disease is a common cause of death period. Not every epidemic is genocide. And the food shortage was the result of a Taino strike in which they stopped planting crops.

Las Casas saw women and children being killed as a common practice – that is genocide: it serves no military objective other than to wipe out a people. Las Casas saw this stuff with his own eyes – the massacres, the grilling and so on.

I don’t doubt that he saw women and children killed. Dictators frequently massacre those who resist to terrify the rest into submission. It’s a terror tactic but it’s not genocide.

Also: If you have ever seriously researched anything you will find that the Wikipedia is not that great. I certainly would not trust it over a primary source.

Most of the information on Wikipedia is sourced from others. That’s why every article has a long list of sources at the bottom. In this case your primary source was quoted followed directly by my quote that researchers today doubt Las Casas’s figures. The thing about primary sources is that they may be primary but it doesn’t mean they’re not bullshlt.

Black people will never defeat white supremacy until they uncover the ugly truth about the Iberians(Spain & Portugal). All of the racial baggage that we deal with, originated from both countries. We don’t like to talk about this issue because of The Moors, who ruled Iberia for 700-800 years. People wonder why black-americans only want to focus on the brits and french slave barons, while ignoring the genesis of our enslavement…Iberia.

The dinosaurs never existed, Rome and Greece never existed, there is no such thing as electricity or atoms, WWI and WW2 were the figments of Everyone’s imagination, ALL your teachers lied to you…

everything you ever learned was a Lie because YOU weren’t there personally to Substantiate it’s existence — so therefore, no one in this world knows the truth but you….because

Even this post doesn’t exist…. we’re all a made-up figments in your imagination because in Reality, you are truly living on this planet all by yourself — waiting on the Haley Comet to pass by, so you can catch a ride to the real Universe!

(Sarcasm off, exiting stage left to go back to my non-reality called “life”)

Met a Taino is Puerto Rico, pure blood, I was astonished! History books had taught me in Jamaica that all the Arawaks were dead. I got a couple of books in Puerto Rico to educate myself starting with calling these folks the right name, Taino versus Arawak which was their language. Having been to other islands, I have not seen another but then again, I have not gone to Cuba.

Yale’s article also says, It is uncertain how many Taíno were living in Hispaniola at first contact. Estimates of the population range from several hundred thousand to over a million.”

So much for your “primary source” figures eh?

It also says, “Within twenty-five years of Columbus’ arrival in Haiti, most of the Taíno had died from enslavement, massacre, or disease.” It sounds like they’re playing your open possibilities game. As I quoted earlier, “Historians have determined that the massive decline was due more to disease than any warfare or direct attacks.”

At this point you are being disingenuous. Most people can die of disease and it can still be genocide, as I pointed out above.

You are making it about the numbers – an old trick that Holocaust deniers use. For a long time it was thought that 4 million had died at Auschwitz. That turned out to be based on Soviet propaganda. Fair enough. Now it is believed that a million died there. BUT IT WAS STILL GENOCIDE.

Genocide deniers love to make it about the numbers because it is a great way to derail the argument. Congratulations.

Your saying that this genocide had no support from mainstream scholars was a fair objection, but one that turns out not to be true. If Yale’s Genocide Studies is not mainstream enough for you, then nothing is.

Most people can die of disease and it can still be genocide, as I pointed out above.

Yes, it can if the disease was deliberately spread with that intention. There’s no evidence of that.

You are making it about the numbers – an old trick that Holocaust deniers use.

Nice smear there, bud. You spout a ridiculous figure and anyone who objects is a “Holocaust denier”. And you called me disingenuous???

If Yale’s Genocide Studies is not mainstream enough for you, then nothing is.

LOL! There are plenty of crackpots at prestigious universities. Just because someone posted it on their website doesn’t magically transform a naturally occurring disease outbreak into genocide. The guy who put it on the website was a student worker! And the only citation he used was the one I quoted.. you know, the quote that says your primary source figures were bullshlt. I’d actually put more stock in the Wikipedia article. At least Wikipedia edits have to be approved by a committee. And they don’t get approved unless someone can back them up with sources.

White Americans went through the stage of dehumanizing Native Americans to the point where they could carry out a genocide against them. They never dehumanized Jews to that degree, so Jews seem more human to them.

Jews got to stage 8 with German Nazis, but not with white Americans. With white Americans, they barely only got to about stage 3 briefly and then retreated back to stage 1. After Jews have become more or less white, they are not even stage 1 any more for the most part.

I think besides Native Americans, only Chinese-Americans reached all the way to stage 8 in the 1870s-1900s. They retreated back to stage 2 during WWII when Japanese-Americans went to stage 6.

[…] "The Taino genocide (1492-1518) is where the Spanish wiped out most of the Tainos (Arawaks), the native people of the northern Caribbean (present-day Cuba, Jamaica, Haiti, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Bahamas, etc). Columbus himself set it in motion and oversaw it till 1500.According to one estimate, genocide and disease wiped out 3 million of the 3.5 million Tainos – 85%. Most were already dead when smallpox arrived in 1518. …" […]

I echo many of your comments above. How sad it is that when these so-called “Christians” came into contact with such generous and hospitable people, they couldn’t help but subjugate them, with the blessing of the pope. And yet Christians of today have the nerve to “cast the first stone” by calling Muslims violent and evil. SMH.

“By the way, i heard that Las Casas, after witnessing the horrors, argued for bringng African slaves for work. He later regretted that a lot.

Is that mentioned in his account that youve read?”

I read that too, but not in this account. He thought blacks would hold up better under slavery than the Tainos. To his horror he later found out he was wrong.

The reason blacks replaced Tainos was not that they were better but that there was a nearly bottomless supply of them. Until the Transatlantic slave trade came to an end, it was more profitable to work them to death than to allow them to live to old age. In Barbados you made the most money if you could work them to death in seven years.

“Why is it that white Americans feel sympathy for a white Jewish victim of genocide but not for Native American victims of genocide?”

Isn’t it because Anne Frank was killed on European land? To this day, the bodies of the Americas’ Native peoples are expendable and violable because they exist on land that the likes of multinationals covet.

So, why not pollute and poison their environment if you can’t just “steal” it outright? Why not blame the Native folks themselves for their infirmities and diseases rather than any government’s policy of environmental contamination.
This is how governments and foreign interests come up smelling like a rose around corpses.

Maybe this is akin to the misinformation I was fed whilst learning about the Tainos: they were all exterminated, even when they weren’t, to make it sound that the conquest was absolute and all that was left behind (land and resources) completely belonged to the victors.

The spanish had dogs that could eat a native in under three minutes. One of the Spanish Governors in the “new world” built a home and had the quartered bodies of natives hanging from his porch to feed his dogs.What kind of “human being” does this?

Genocide is a symptom of a deep spiritual illness. It has been fostered by most colonial powers. The only reason there is so much documentation about the Spanish crimes is because they were willing to document even if it included documenting their crimes. The Americans went above and beyond their own expectations when killing indians and not in the 1500s but up to the 18th and 19th century.American Indians couldn’t practice their religions until 1979. More than half of the American Indian population now in the USA is not even recognized by the government. Spanish were horrible but so were the English, French ,Portuguese and Dutch.

Hi, I am curious, what is being taught now in Junior High School and Senior High school classrooms about Columbus and about his voyages to the “New World” and the nature of his encountrances with the Native inhabitants. What does your textbook say?

from what I remember I think our teachers didn’t like the idea of teaching kids about genocide and how what some kids think as “The man who dicoverd America” was responsible for it. I think my books just focased on his voyage there and how this all came to be.

But, you know, the USA was founded upon genocide, slavery, ethnic cleansing, lynching, etc. By avoiding the subject, the teachers are avoiding a very essential element of history. Leaving it out causes history to be rewritten.

When I was growing up, I always wondered what happened to the Native Americans around where I grew up. It was never taught. Or the story is that they died from diseases brought over by Europeans and Africans and it couldn’t be helped. The real story is that they were removed to make room for European-American settlement. Removal is equivalent to ethnic cleansing, which could be just expulsion, or it could be genocide.

BTW, Try to pick a name and keep to it, otherwise the blogger might delete some of your posts thinking that you are trying to assume multiple personalities. He has a strict rule about that.

When I was 14, I started to find some of the history taught in school a bit strange. When I did my project for Advanced History class in High School, I decided to do it on the myth or reality of the “Melting Pot” – what I found out gave me food for thought, and I found out I never could get satisfied until I could find out the truth.

The purpose of learning history in US high schools is not for you to learn the actual truth about history, but to teach you to be a patriotic American. It is particularly damaging for people who do not identify with the white mainstream. They learn that only white people shaped US history, and only their contributions counted.

The Indian genocide was truly horrific indeed. I like how you have constructed this blog so well, it really makes the story clear and quite simple to understand. I believe that Bartolome de Las Casas really makes a point in his book ‘The Destruction if the Indies’. I would really like more history on this though because I would like to know what happened after Bartolome’s death. It does seem from modern evidence that the Tainos were wiped out by the Conquistadors from Cuba, Jamaica, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic; but I was wondering what other tribe besides the Tainos were living in the Caribbean Islands? I know the Mayans were traveling there for trading purposes, but did they established themselves in certain islands for long-term living? Did the Mayans live among the Tainos as well in certain islands? I just wondering. I think Bartolome’s works are pretty complete overall concerning what happened to the Tainos at the hands of the Spaniards, but I also know that nit all has been known. I mean Bartolome only didn’t make into the 1600’s for example, what was happening to the Tainos then? Is their another eyewitness who wrote about the Tainos downfall? Their a lot I would like to know I guess, no matter what I believe your article is very informative and easy to understand, thanks.

Reading this post today was especially poignant because the genocide of the Taino (Arawaks) is referenced in my book, FANTASY, which was just released for Kindle and Nook this month.

I write black romance novels, but to me the “black” aspect of my books entails more than just having African-American characters. Although my books are romances I always try to incorporate black culture and black history whenever possible. FANTASY takes place on a cruise ship, and Jamaica is one of the ports-of-call, which is how the subject comes up.

The section of the book that mentions the Arawak genocide is very short, and just as an FYI I’m including it below in this post. I hope by doing so I’m not violating blog etiquette.

“We goin’ to de Coyaba River Garden Museum as de first stop, Sam,” Avery told her, “and Coyaba means paradise in Arawak.”
“What the hell is an Arawak?” Ivory wanted to know.
“Well, mon, dere ain’t no more Caribbean Arawaks, who were also called Taino. Dey were the first people of Jamaica. De entire race was exterminated—killed by forced labor, torture, and diseases brought to de island by de Spaniards.”
“Damn,” Ivory said softly.
“De Jamaicans here today are descendants of slaves from Africa, who were brought over to replace de Arawaks,” Avery meaningfully continued.
Sameerah looked out the window again. But this time the scenery seemed not quite so captivating, not quite so welcoming, not quite so lovely.

I don’t understand why the truth about Columbus and his men isn’t told in schools and is even celebrated as a holiday in the United States. This man was pure evil. He ranks right up there with Stalin and Pol Pot. Such an evil, evil sociopath. Worse, were the police under his command who carried out his orders maiming killing raping torturing at will. Without his men this genocide might have never have occurred.

The scope of this is unfathomable.

I can’t believe I am just now learning about this at 36 years old. Columbus evil and atrocities were so extreme that word reached the King and Queen of Spain from across and impassible sea and he was called back to be put on trial.

I’m upset this is not openly discussed by mainstream Historians who supposedly have a prime directive to report the truth. The evidence is overwhelming reported and depicted from multiple witnesses including Columbus himself all on original documents.

How it it that the torture, massacre and genocide of the size Taino population in its 3 to 8 million people is not sytematically recognized,throughout the world. It is not taught, acknowleged or mourned in the manner in which the Nazi Germany Holocaust by Germans and
Adolf Hitler is . Instead year after year
these atrocities go hidden and masked from history books . America
has a national holiday for the most
infamous Nazi of all time Christopher
Columbus . How is this continually allowed and their has never been an apology or acknowledgment as that of black slavery. Of which to this day
America still makes reparation and awareness of this crime against a people & humanity. Yet descendents
of Taino’s are not given the same respect and dignity.

I wish some entity perhaps the hewish community could assume the task to remind the world of these atrocities, for there are no Tainos to remind the world what the Spaniards did during the 13 and 14 century.

Wow! Feeling devastated for our ancestors!!! Simply appalling!!! History is written by the victors so always slanted folks! Columbus was a tyrannical monster! When the King & Queen of Spain heard what he had done, he was brought back in chains to Spain! It’s amazing to me that knowing Columbus was not the first discover the new world & based on known facts, that United Statesmen still continue to have this farce of a holiday!!! Smdh!!!
Good news though! They did NOT manage to wipe us all out & the Tainos of the (Arawak) tribe are alive & thriving today!!! Just Google Taino/Arawak! 🙂

I really appreciate the information in this page. I’ve looked for information about the Taino and found very little. The funny thing is (or maybe not so funny) is that my father is of Taino ancestry (therefore so am I) and my mother is a spaniard. It’s really conflicting. I love my spanish heritage and hate it at the same time.

And the blacks and Puerto Ricans are what today? Primarily Christians? Losers. You have any idea how many of these natives were murdered because of Christian settlers? Amazing, that’s like worshiping the Ku Klux Klan a thousand years from now. Let me help you out here, humans/hominids are made up of billions of living things called cells. We are not individual. That means every cell would have a soul. King Hatuey chose to go to Hell before he was burned to death believing Christians were in Heaven. Thanks to nature’s reality he just died into nonexistance. Like 98 billion of us to date have and always will. Believe in yourself and your love ones. Religion is the greatest lie in human history.

While I am a practicing Christian, I’d have to say that being of a different (or non-understood) religion compounded by ones perceived race seems to make it easier for Christians to dehumanize their victims and make them ripe for (self)righteous conquest.

If Africans could at one point in time be Popes it seems to me that they were not considered as being inferior and less learned. (After the schism it may have been easier to see them as heretic, inferior and not worth anything other than slaves.)
If the native peoples around the world were heathens because they did not know Christianity – were they then more human after they accepted it?
Are the Irish Catholics (In Ireland) seen as barbarians by the current ruling class because they don’t swim the Bosphorus?
I think I remember hearing on the mini-doc after the DVD/movie ‘Underworld’ that when one left the church that he would become a vampire.
Were Jews inferior because they failed to accept Chris and become Christian (even though it is a Jew that Christians worshiped)?

Were those who spread Christianity by force any different than the Jihadists of today?

You raise an interesting question. While I will say that the invading Christians did (on occasion) give a choice unlike jihadists, their methods do draw parallels. Throughout history Christians, the Catholic Church in particular, have been the cause of pain, suffering and murder. Even worse is when they deny the atrocities they committed.

I’m sure, or at least I choose to believe, that not all of those who were sent to the Americas to spread “the word of God” saw the indigenous people as inhuman or inferior beings. I believe common sense would have prevailed in more than one occasion, and the person would see that those were living, breathing human beings. Not inferior, not even different, but the same species. And those people that saw the Taino and other indigenous people as humans like them, where they shunned? Treated like madmen? Murdered even? Sent to suffer the same fate as the Tainos?

I know this is a very old post, but I was in shocked to discover that 90% of what is stated here it’s just propaganda. Even the pictures used are well known to be totally false, and the part of soldiers smashing babies against walls is completely ridiculous. And yet, people buy this outrageous thing. Horrible things were done, but the ones exposed here are just shameless lies condemned by every serious historian. What a bunch of lies and propaganda we have here.

Columbus Day is celebrated in the Tiano related islands as a day of sorrow and pain that our ancestors endured when our islands and our peoplewere ravaged,raped,slaughtered & enslaved. The animals were treated better than our people.. Let us not forget about our roots.. Always & forever fighting to “Break the Chains that Bind”.

Bismillah:
Hahaha. Tainos and Arawaks choose Islam. ISIS will take the Caribbean and Latin America to save the Indigenous peoples who converted to Islam from the Western Kuffar Colonialists. Oh Tainos, Allah heard your prayers and your martyrdoms of your Muslim Taino ancestors because the Spanish and Europeans in Europe feel the Muslim Jihaddist attacks like Paris and Brussels. Allah avenges the Taino martyrs by sending Muslims Suicide bombers in Madrid, Paris, London and Brussels. In Madrid in Spain will experienced more Bombing and killing attacks against the Spanish Kuffars by the Islamized Tainos, Mayans, Mapuches and etc of Latin America for every Taino, Maya, Mapiche and etc that the Spanish Kuffars Killed in the Past. Allahu Akbar!!!

To know the white devil is to know his deeds and this is just the beginning of the nightmare to come to these islands thru what will be known as the transatlantic slave trade that would last 400 years.

My grandmother’s from both sides mother and father were Taino women’s and from my grandfather’s side they were Spaniards I am both Taino and Spaniard but I feel more Taino cause I be having alot of visions from my Taino ancestors,can you please send me more information on my ancestors the taínos thank you so much.

I now know the feeling that I used to get as a boy in the Bronx a Puerto Rican born in New York City why Columbus Day what’s a feeling of unease knowing a Feeling of this Christopher Columbus of what he did to my people now that I read about it it makes sense to me the feeling that I got and we honor the butcher of people of Nations of people they just wanted to live in their own land thank you for pointing that out to me Puerto Rican born in New York City

I came to Jamaica as a small child and stayed with the lost Tribes in the mountains of St Andrew and St Catherine, on the western side of the Blue mountains. I was a very lush valley about 25 miles across. Those tribes kept themselves private and apart from the rest of the Jamaican peoplle since they were the kings and ruling people taken out of Africa by the British. I was brought to them by my grandfather. And he left me there to learn there ways, it was consummated warrior-ship and those were the true miracle people anywhere on the earth until today, only the Hindus and Chinese compare with them, they reached a level not seen on earth since ancient times. They told me the tragedy of the Arawak or Tainos as they are called, by the time African came there were just a hand full of the Arawak left and those were in the hills hiding. And they intermixed with the Africans, so by the time I got there there were no more full blooded Tainos left. I think the estimate of the number of Arawaks is about 4 and a half millions, but after the Spaniard got finished with them, there were about 80,000 left and those they worked to death in mind looking for gold. So by the time Africans got there they were a sprinkling of them left in the remote regions and those were assimilated into the Maroons which was the war tribes. These war tribes were lead by the Dahomey royal league with were Fon people from Benin, all togetther there were 12 tribes, right now I will try to recall some of the important tribes. 1)Fon, 2)Yuroba,3)Ewe, Ga4) 5)Congolese, 6)Coramantee this tribe is no more in Africa, the Coramantees all have red hair everyone of them so these people was kept in remote area of the island so no other people will married them and so they won’t lose their red hair, 7)Ashante, 8)Fante, 9)Kamis this was the sacred clan, because these men and women was from Kamis, which is Egypt today. Up until Alexander times it was Kamis, but the Greeks changed it to Egypt, because up until that time it was India that was Egypt an India was a sacred place to Kamis people, so they changed the array to change the magic of Kamis people. Witchcraft you know, it was here in the beginning and until now people are practicing that to keep their tribes in power, it also degenerate them but they don’t care. Anyway, I left out three tribes but that is all I can remember right now. The one thing that stays with me from my sojourn with those tribes in those mountains I this, they kept every relic of the enslavement to show their young people, in those mountains and they show me the sugar mills where the people were kept to make sugar. And they were chained up by their neck or legs on the work site where they worked until they were dead near this huge vat where the sugar is processed. Don’t you think the karma is heaped up like mount Everest, that is the only time they would get of that chain and their replacement would take their place. I felt the European made some kind of pace among themselves when they decide to enslave other peoples around the world, I feel sure about that because racism would not exist today without that. It is possible there are might be full blood Taino in Jamaica but if they are there, they might stay hidden because of the pass injustices done to them. Let just say they were disseminated and that is stating it lightly. I came to Jamaica in the late 1950s and stay in those mountains learning the way of the warrior and it was very dramatic to say the least. Yes, I learn a lot from them and saw the way of humankind, i did not have to come but my father wanted me to learn those ways, my grandfather went back to where he came from. But he did visited me once in 1984, you can imagined I came on to the US because my father wanted me to also, so here I am. That kind of ring a bell.

This is instruction to all you so call Hispanics who deny African blood and claim spanish heritage. A country that deny you to this day and as you can see from history cared less about you then. So you want to be spanish, just because you speak a language doesn’t mean you are of them or from them. I was born in the Anglophone carribean and I would never claim England. Damned the queen. Let history talk and ignorance walk. Bless Africa it’s people and it’s God’s.

26:35 These are the sons of Ephraim after their families: of Shuthelah, the family of the Shuthalhites: of Becher, the family of the Bachrites: of Tahan, the family of the Tahanites.

Numbers 26 : 35

I was born and raised in Puerto Rico and many here are called “jíbaro”, it was the name used by the Spaniards when they persecuted our Taíno ancestors and they were called “jíbaros” by the Spaniards because our ancestors hid in the mountains and forests from the Spaniard invaders and rapists. The very word “jíbaro” links with “Hebreo/Hebrew”, since the Edomite (European) colonial powers knew who they were persecuting and raping and killing. Take out the J and put an H which has the same sound as the J in Spanish and you get “HÍBARO (hee-baa-rew) – HEBREW – ÍBERO – HEBER – HEBREO”, it is also very similar to the name Abreu, and Abreu sounds like the word Hebrew in Spanish: Hebreo. The word “jíbaro” remains alive among Puerto Ricans and it is used more for the people living in rural areas and sometimes used to call someone an ignorant of certain knowledge or topic, ask any of them but surely they don’t even know what is the origin of this word, they will think of it as a simple byword or nickname for peasants.
(Oseas 4:6). Hebrew Israelites by bloodline but “jíbaros” for not knowing it.

49:22 Joseph is a fruitful bough, even a fruitful bough by a well; whose branches run over the wall:49:23 The archers have sorely grieved him, and shot at him, and hated him:49:24 But his bow abode in strength, and the arms of his hands were made strong by the hands of the mighty God of Jacob; (from thence is the shepherd, the stone of Israel)49:25 Even by the God of thy father, who shall help thee; and by the Almighty, who shall bless thee with blessings of heaven above, blessings of the deep that lieth under, blessings of the breasts, and of the womb:49:26 The blessings of thy father have prevailed above the blessings of my progenitors unto the utmost bound of the everlasting hills: they shall be on the head of Joseph, and on the crown of the head of him that was separate from his brethren.

Genesis 49 : 22 – 26

“fruitful bough, even a fruitful bough by a well; whose branches run over the wall..”, meaning we have families of three, four generations or 5, 6 living in the same house.. “Fruitful, Puerto Ricans love to multiply themselves indeed.

“The archers (Spaniards) have sorely grieved him, and shot at him, and hated him..” the genocide of our Taíno ancestors.

” him that was separate from his brethren..”, we were separated from our brethren the other tribes of Israel scattered and ended up in this little colony/island no one hears much about, although we are close to our labeled Cuban, Dominican, Haitian brothers along with the surrounding islands, whom are also the children of Israel.

7:8 Ephraim, he hath mixed himself among the people; Ephraim is a cake not turned.7:9 Strangers have devoured his strength, and he knoweth it not: yea, gray hairs are here and there upon him, yet he knoweth not.

Hosea 7 : 8 – 9

“he hath mixed himself among the people; Ephraim is a cake not turned..”, meaning we Boricuas and many of the so called Native tribes (our northern Israelite kingdom family like the Mexicans) come in every color due to the whitening our people, the raping of our women when the archers/strangers (Spaniards/Americans – Edomites) “have devoured his strength, and he knoweth it not..”, we have been colonized and conquered yet we don’t know what is happening and the majority of the Boricuas think everything is “alright” giving praise to the beast (USA) who systematically enslaved the Puerto Rican population with its “commonwealth”, and all we want to do is “parrandear” (partying).
They (USA – Edomites – so called White people) have devoured us (Vieques bombed, streets filled with drugs, high rates of homicides, the youth is lost, immorality everywhere, catholic temples everywhere, contaminated skies through Chemtrails 24/7, high rate of analfabetism, a people thrown under the rug, without a voice) and we thought they were the good guys due to the ignorance of our own history and legacy, the ignorance of ourselves that came with slavery and colonization and indoctrination with false history in school and “church” looking like a circus with idolatry. Remember all of these atrocities and crimes against mankind in a little island called Borikén by the Taíno. (Barakayah-Boricua – blessed of AHAYAH)!

“Abba” in Hebrew is Father. “Baba” in Taíno is Father.

En Taíno:

Daea-ababa – I am a father/yo soy padre.

14:36 And he said, Abba, Father, all things are possible unto thee; take away this cup from me: nevertheless not what I will, but what thou wilt.

Mark 14 : 36

“Banah” in Hebrew means “#to #build, or #to #construct, or a #house”.. how come our Taíno ancestors spoke the same word Baná referring to a big place or something great? A big place or something great has to be #made, #built, #constructed, it has to be #worked on.

Taíno word:

Baná = n : Greatness or Grand Place.

In life, any greatness or thing in order to come forth it must be #built, in order for men and women to bring forth lineage a child must be #created, to ease hunger food must be #prepared, and so does any “great place or any type of physical structure” (house, temple), it must be #built and #constructed.

This curious usage is highly significant in understanding the Bible’s thoughts on mankind’s social #structure: the group is feminine and the individual is masculine; and thus woman comes from man. Hence Sarah figured that she would be #built up by Abraham’s child through #Hagar (Genesis 16:2), arch-mothers Leah and Rachel #built the house of Israel (Ruth 4:11), and a wise woman #builds her house where a foolish one tears it down (Proverbs 14:1).

It should be no surprise that the Hebrew words אבן (‘eben), meaning stone, and בן (ben), meaning son, are thought by some to come from our verb בנה (bana). Also note that the formally unrelated noun בית (bayit) means temple, and the verb בין (bin) means to understand.

Agüeybaná
Bayamón
Ahrasibo
Yuqayeqe
Yabaqoa
Ceibah
Yauqo…
Baba (Abba)
.. to name a few words, certainly are not from the Latin tongue. What language could the Taíno have spoken? How come we can’t know the legacy of our forefathers?

The “education” system, as to be expected, is a fraud and has failed to bring the truth to our people concerning our past. So now everyone is speaking Spanish and English but how come we aren’t speaking the language of our Taíno forefathers?

16:13 Therefore will I cast you out of this land #into #a #land #that #ye #know #not, #neither #ye #nor #your #fathers; and there shall ye serve other gods day and night; where I will not shew you favour.

Yeremiah 16 : 13

17:4 And thou, even thyself, shalt discontinue from thine heritage that I gave thee; #and #I #will #cause #thee #to #serve #thine #enemies in the land which thou knowest not: for #ye #have #kindled a fire in mine anger, which shall burn for ever.

33:13 And #of #Joseph #he #said, #Blessed #of #the #Almighty #be #his #land, for the precious things of heaven, for the dew, and for the deep that coucheth beneath,33:14 And for #the #precious #fruits brought forth by the sun, and for the precious things put forth by the moon,33:15 And for #the #chief #things #of #the #ancient #mountains, and for #the #precious #things #of #the #lasting #hills,33:16 And for #the #precious #things #of #the #earth #and #fulness #thereof, and #for #the #good #will #of #him #that #dwelt #in #the #bush: #let #the #blessing #come #upon #the #head #of #Joseph, and upon the top of the head of him that was #separated #from #his #brethren.33:17 His glory is like the firstling of his bullock, and his horns are like the horns of unicorns: with them he shall #push #the #people #together to the ends of the earth: and #they #are #the #ten #thousands #of #Ephraim, and #they #are #the #thousands #of #Manasseh.

Our scattered Hebrew brethren and the mighty children of Yudah (so called Negroes) call us children of Yusef, house of Ephraim. A cake not turned whom strangers (Spaniards/Americans – Edomites) have devoured.. yet our hand was #baná strong, and our strength comes from the Almighty, AHAYAH the God of Abraham, Isaac and Yacob. ﻿ ﻿ ﻿ ﻿

what most people dont know is until 2006 taino Arawak was declared extinct.. the reason for this is they renamed our lands and names … renaming us Puerto ricans Dominicans Cubans etc to strip us of our indigenous rights and lands… all 24 tribes of taino are on one flag .. below is the only 3 tribes allowed for us to register to

The motto of the new flag is “One People, One Nation, One Destiny” because the flag also represents the three confederated Taino tribal bands in Puerto Rico (The Jatibonicu Taino Tribe of Borikén), Florida (The Tekesta Taino Tribal Band of Bimini Florida), and New Jersey (Jatibonicu Taino Tribal Band of New Jersey).May 29, 2014

So, what happenned in what is now the USA? The very same thing. The english, the spanish, the belgians, the dutch, the portuguese and on and on and on. Not to mention the germans and the balkans in the 20 century. If you have never read anything like this you dont read much. The human race before and now.

I never knew much about my puertorican roots .but to learn about the cruelty our people suffred and endured has changed the way ifeel about Columbus day i cannot celebrate nor will i acknowledge if any spanish blood that may flow through my viens im appauled and disgusted at what ive learned.

Importantly, Taino DNA is showing up in many Cuban Americans. This is interesting because it was thought that the Taino were exterminated by the Spaniards, and it turns out that there was significant interbreeding.

wow, i’ve read your blog, all of it. its really interesting. I am latina and some of the things said here has me wanting to look up more info. about my taino background. glad i found this and hope more people add on a little more history as time goes by. thank you

Why don’t you mention how the Taino killed, massacred, and ate the Spanish, even taking human body parts for trophies? What I said is actually cited. Where is your citation? Why would they grill them or cut them up into pieces, then tell them of the Christian faith? And smallpox would be arrived when the Spanish arrived. You obviously don’t understand anything about medicine or disease. 1518 would’ve been when the Spanish first started noticing it. Smallpox killed people so fast it made the Spanish think that the population was just that much smaller. Smallpox would spread from Europeans to Indians, then from Indians to other Indians further inland within days.

Source: Mainly “A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies” (1542) by Bartolome de Las Casas.

“Why don’t you mention how the Taino killed, massacred, and ate the Spanish, even taking human body parts for trophies?”

It sounds like you’re confusing accounts of the Caribs with the Taino (Arawaks).

And there’s reason to cast doubt on those accounts:

Columbus and others of his time stoked the mythology of the cannibalistic, ruthless Carib with the Spanish monarchy to obtain their approval to launch a slave trade that would fund the development of the Caribbean: In exchange for supplies and livestock to help the colonists gain their footing, Columbus would send ships of slaves drawn from the vengeful Caribs. He even sent them a “sample”—though the people he shipped back to Spain were taken from the “friendly” Arawaks because those are the people he could readily access. It seems the Spanish initially deferred and postponed a decision, but Columbus kept up his campaign and in 1503 Queen Isabella issued a proclaimation that agreed to the capture of the hardened idolatrous cannibals. She reasoned that removing them from the Caribbean was the first step in converting them, and subsequently civilizing them.

This created an impetus to find as many Caribs as possible. And was likely exacerbated by tensions that likely existed between and among the different Indigenous communities, all of which likely practiced some degree of ritualized cannibalism by the way. That is, they may have taken tokens to mark their victories, but no evidence has been uncovered of widespread full-blown cannibalism. Taken together it is easy to see how the alleged numbers of the Caribs could have increased monumentally.

It’s shameful that people give their opinions without knowing real history. All about the Spanish genocide is part of the “Black Legend” spread by England , France, USA, Dutch..that were enemies of Spain for centuries. They’re really good history books out there. We could start from the US independence war from England, Hispanoamerican War, Invasion of USA in Puerto Rico, Treaty of Paris of 1898… Why if there was Spanish genocide there still native Indians in Central and South America and North American Indians are almost extinct?

Perhaps you didn’t notice that the main source used in writing this article was “A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies” (1542) by Bartolome de Las Casas.

Bartolome de Las Casas was a Spainard and was present in the Caribbean when these atrocities were taking place.

“Why if there was Spanish genocide there still native Indians in Central and South America and North American Indians are almost extinct?”

Where are the Taino today? This article is specifically about them. You can’t say that the Taino genocide didn’t happen just because there are Maya alive today. These are two distinctly different peoples from two different regions.

By numbers, the U.S. has a larger Native population than most countries in Latin America. It is number 5 on the list given at the beginning of the Wikipedia article linked here:

There are more than 300,000 enrolled members of the Navajo tribe alone in the United States. Compare that number to the total Indigenous population of the Latin American countries in the lower half of the list.

There was genocide here, no doubt, and some tribes were affected far worse than others. But this idea that “the North American Indian is almost extinct” is a myth that has been floating around for over 100 years. Their numbers are actually starting to rebound.

It has also been suggested that the atrocities that Las Casas described were exaggerated or even invented, but that is not generally considered likely as Las Casas was far from the only person to be deeply worried about abuse and mistreatment of the Indians. The Dominican friars Antonio de Montesinos and Pedro de Córdoba had reported extensive violence already in the first decade of the conquest of the Indies, and throughout the conquest of the Americas, there were reports of abuse of the natives by friars and priests and ordinary citizens, and many massacres of indigenous people were reported in full by those who perpetrated them. Even some of Las Casas’s enemies, such as Toribio de Benavente Motolinia, reported many gruesome atrocities committed against the Indians by the colonizers. All in all, modern historians tend to disregard the numerical figures given by Las Casas, but they maintain that his general picture of a violent and abusive conquest represented reality.[91]

Lol. And look what the Native Americans did. Ripped people’s hearts out alive in the capital Aztec city and at Europeans… We white Americans will not be treated like Nazis. Quit making up genocides. You’re racist and trying to hurt people based on race. Disgusting.

“And look what the Native Americans did. Ripped people’s hearts out alive in the capital Aztec city and at Europeans…”

The Aztecs did that as part of their religion — and then the Europeans came along and burned the Aztecs at the stake as part of their own religion.

During the Inquisition, the European Christian church, for hundreds of years, tortured and murdered people accused of heresy. The Spanish brought this practice with them to the Americas and used it on the Native peoples.

I don’t approve of either type of human sacrifice. But one of these two religions is based on the Golden Rule and “turning the other cheek” and “forgive your enemies.”

“We white Americans will not be treated like Nazis.”

How is anyone treating you like a Nazi? I don’t see any new Nuremberg Trials ramping up.

“Quit making up genocides.”

No one is making up anything. If you believe it’s not true, the onus is on you to prove that using reputable scholarship and citations.

Jess, you’re a brainwashed racist. Things started here do not have a Reliable source. It is total hogwash. And Native Americans ripped the hearts out of Europeans well they still lived. They sometimes ate them too. Man, they don’t sound like savages at all

“And Native Americans ripped the hearts out of Europeans well they still lived. They sometimes ate them too.”

I never said they didn’t. Are you going to deny that Europeans burned Native Americans alive? Are you going to deny that Europeans bashed out Native babies’ brains? Are you going to deny that white American soldiers at the Sand Creek Massacre took body parts from Native corpses to display as trophies, including male and female genitalia and dead fetuses ripped from the womb? Does this sound civilized?

That’ s why when I travel to and through the middle of the Island of Puerto Rico I wonder why would anyone live in places like this; deep in the mountains surrounded by vegetation?. Guess if you were running away from the Devil. Is what you would do.?. That’ s why All my life I struggle with the Spaniards as good people and Religion as a good thing and I can’t seem to get is why all religions are in constant battle with each other?. Now I know I am a good person, but there are SO MANY demented people in this world. So as the one chief from Hispanola Hatuey I too would rather good hell than go to heaven.

Thank you for the brief stories.Again this really hits me hard. I still have a hard time understanding, how men could do this to another man.#1 could it be gelousy, #2 Fear, #3 The unceirtainty in them selves??
” Their actions would turn me. “

As many are arguying about the senses of the15 hundreds in the Islands of the caribbeans in refrenses to the Spaniards Masecreas some 85% were butchered , well if the Devil was killing yours, those safed.
headed for the hills, as you would.

Christopher Columbus was a Jew, and his men were all mercenaries and highwaymen. Queen Isabella and Ferdinand were deceived by Columbus because they were overly curious about obscure and secret matters of the world and geography more than they were interested in discerning who Columbus really was.